November 29, 2007 – The UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics gets underway in Sydney, Australia, this weekend November 30-December 2, with a record number of entries.

Fifteen reigning World Champions are among the 395 cyclists entered in the opening event of the World Cup Classics from 30th November — 2nd December. Last season the largest number of riders at a World Cup event was 249 in Moscow, Russia, and the same number in Manchester, Great Britain.

Among the World Champions lining up in Sydney are Holland’s Theo Bos (men’s sprint), Great Britain’s Chris Hoy (men’s keirin and kilometer time trial) and Victoria Pendleton (women’s sprint, team sprint and keirin) and Australia’s Anna Meares (women’s 500m time trial).

The new qualification system for the 2008 Olympics stipulates that all the individual World Cup winners and World Champions automatically gain selection for the Olympic Games in Beijing. Up until now, it was up to each National Olympic Committee to select its nation’s Olympic representatives.

This rule means that 21 places for the Olympic Games will be attributed directly to individual riders and the 23 places resulting from the team events will be awarded to the nations. The 144 remaining places will be attributed to the nations according to the individual UCI track ranking established after the UCI World Championships in Manchester in March. This ranking will include the results of all the competitions registered on the UCI track calendar.

The record participation in Sydney includes 48 nations (previous record 46 nations in Aguascalientes, Mexico, before the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens), and 28 track teams. Track teams were introduced for the 2004-2005 season and have proved immensely popular, with the number steadily increasing at each event.

The four UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics events for the season are:
– Sydney, Australia November 30-December 2, 2007
– Beijing, China, December 7-9, 2007 (Olympic Test Event)
– Los Angeles, United States, January 18-20, 2008
– Ballerup (Copenhagen), Denmark, February 15-17, 2008

The UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Manchester, which take place from March 26-30, 2008, will close the qualifying period for the Olympic Games.